


wanderlust

by edeabeth



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: End of the World, Exploring, F/F, Friendship/Love, Running Away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-05
Updated: 2014-01-05
Packaged: 2018-01-07 15:24:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1121457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edeabeth/pseuds/edeabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They ran away once. They never really stopped running.</p>
            </blockquote>





	wanderlust

**Author's Note:**

> I've never really written a f/f story before, but I've been on a buffy nonstop marathon, which created this. prompts were: buzzing, runnings, ash and maps.

They ran away once. They never really stopped running.

.

When she is five, she starts to hear this buzzing in her ears.

.

When she is six, she starts to ignore it.

.

Age seven, all she can hear is blades against ice and it makes her numb in the end.

.

Dawn’s real. Sickeningly real. She can’t stand it. It makes her want to run away, until she’s standing at the edge of the world, looking down at existence.

The buzzing is back, louder than before.

.

At age nine, she finds an old map at a garage sale. She pins it up on her bedroom wall, and traces boundaries and worlds with her fingertips. The buzzing roars, drowning out the arguments of her parents. She wants to escape. Wants to run and run and run until there is nowhere left to run to.

.

She’s no fool.

She learns there are such things as monsters. The sort that ruins homes, with a leering smile and a flat stare the dissolves entire families. She is ten, and she feels hate so strong that she fears it.

She listens to her father’s feeble attempts of conversation. She can smell the perfume conspiring at his collar. She can look right past his lies.

.

Age eleven, she discovers the idea of wanderlust. 

.

When she turns fourteen, she has an entire new fate all mapped out. There are rules restraining her. There is a man shoving the entire world on her shoulders and shackling her to it. The fear drowns out everything around her, and suddenly she’s clawing at a life that’s no longer her own.

.

He’s the first one to die.

One by one.

.

She’s barely fifteen when she becomes a victim warped of a hero. All she can smell is ashes and dust and fire.

She ruins a marriage. Ruins her family.

Suddenly all she can see is hollowed boxes and her life burning up in her shadow. The buzzing is gone. Just emptiness remains.

.

When she meets him, he looks more like a villain than a guide.

Suddenly his name is on her tongue, and she can’t stop thinking of him.

_Angel. Angel. Angel._

She’s only fifteen, but suddenly she can feel more than just boundaries and lost ideas.

Faintly, she can hear a buzz.

.

She dies.

Not easily.

She’s already dead before she even strolls into his prison. Accepted fate, bound by sacrifice. She gives a weak attempt, but all she can feel is the thudding of her heart slowly dying and the roar of the buzz deafening her to reality.

Suddenly, she is gone.

And that’s alright.

.

When she awakens, all she can feel is silence. Eyes stare at her, watching and waiting for her to crumble apart like ashes and die.

She remembers burning down a building, watching it slowly collapse. Fragments of a structure standing tall like a skeleton, the taste of destruction strong in the air.

She feels an itch.

An itch to leave, because she doesn’t want this. She doesn’t want to die again, doesn’t want to be dragged out as another sacrifice. She’s tired of battling in the dark. Lifting up the world again and again, feeling the chains that bind her to the secrets and monsters and thieves.

.

The world is catching up to her.

.

She just wants to watch everything burn now.

The candle eventually burns out at some point, and she can feel it within her. Crawling up her spine, lurching up her body.

Fear is stronger than love, and love never stood a chance to hate.

.

Everything kind of blurs for a while.

She remembers killing him. The look in his eyes.

He’s not why she left. Her mother isn’t why she left.

That’s why she left. To figure out everything that’s ever existed.

The buzzing returns, and she follows it to some city and to some apartment where she can barely hold herself together long enough to grasp hold of a life.

She feels lonely.

.

Learning how to grow up is a bitch.

Accepting your mistakes is a bigger bitch.

.

She feels cold and glazed over. Like a shadow, dim and weak.

Faith is there, a quirk of fate.

There’s someone else sharing the burden.

.

She can feel anything when everything is still.

The twist of Faith’s hips, the long flat stare of a woman who clung to the corners of her father like a monster. The growing chains binding innocent people to her existence. The way the ashes are becoming fire.

Faith smiles at her.

Buffy feels young again.

(and maybe that’s okay.)

.

She wants to skate.

.

They are both saviours and monsters and prisoners and victims and martyrs. All warped by fate.

Faith tells her one night when the moon is bright that they should leave.

Buffy is good at packing, and Faith is good at leaving.

Just a bag full of money and a change of clothes and the things they can’t just leave behind. Faith boxes up a small stack of worn out books, and Buffy bags up her skates. It’s easy. Narrowing down every piece of them, picking the things that really matter.

At last second, Buffy removes the rolled up map of the world and folds it down real small. Small enough to fit into a pocket, maybe. In her hands, she’s clasping out an entire world.

She doesn’t place it in her bag like she thought she might have. Instead, she watches it burn. Burns until nothing is left.

.

What does that tell you?

.

It starts the moment Buffy slips out of the classroom window. The buzzing is growing and growing and growing, and they are flying.

Buffy is flying away from her past and responsibilities. Faith is running from a future that never lasted long enough.

.

Buffy ran away once. Pulled out of her life because her life _was_ breaking apart.

Faith was running away twice. Pulling free from a place that _wasn’t_ enough to tether her down.

.

They grow down instead of growing up.

.

They were like the sea. Forcing a path into stone, carving out the remains from sheer force.

A hurricane force, a still creation.

They were like the forest.

Knotted with secret pathways and deadly corners.

The sky, pierced with the burdens of the stars and planets and moons.

“Look, the skies falling.”

.

They swim naked in the sea, wander the streets of Florence giddy. They ignore England, straying into the bitter cold summers of Russia where everything is grey.

Buffy follows the buzzing, follows it around the Grand Canyon, and chases after it in the ruins of Greece. It’s liberating, she laughs. Faith calls her crazy, but lets her run as fast as she can.

One day they venture into Canada. Explore the oceans. Find the coral reefs. Travel the mountains. They are nomads, braving the world.

She never could find the edge of the world.

.

It’s a good life, Buffy thinks.

.

When the world ended, they kept running. 

(wanderlust)


End file.
